


Never Land

by TheSigyn



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-01
Updated: 2011-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-15 09:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4602408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never again, Ianto told himself, and Jack promised. Never again. But Jack is more distraught than he wants to admit after the events of Small Worlds, and Ianto starts to contemplate whether “never” means what he thought it did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Land

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of a sequel to my story Cleaning Up, set after Cyberwoman, but it's not really connected.

  
  
Ianto couldn’t sleep. Again. Nightmares of Lisa plagued his dreams. Of course, they’d been plaguing his dreams ever since Canary Wharf. But they were worse, now. Rather than just the smell of ozone and burning and Lisa’s screams, now he was being hunted by her, and then Gwen and Owen and Tosh were converted and hunted him, too, and then Jack...   
  
Jack never converted in his dreams. Sometimes Jack simply killed him. Sometimes, Jack turned around and walked away, leaving him at their mercy. Sometimes Jack simply ignored him, standing like an icy mountain at Ianto’s screams.... And sometimes Jack didn’t ignore him... and those were the dreams that made Ianto wake up in a sweat and kept him from closing his eyes, because those dreams... those dreams were the worst.   
  
And those dreams were getting more frequent.   
  
It was one of those dreams that woke him tonight. The dream memory of Jack’s skin and Jack’s lips and Jack’s scent weighed Ianto down, his heart beating wildly. He dragged himself out of his bed. “Get out of my head, you bastard,” he muttered as he swallowed some water from the cup by his bed. His flat was barren and empty. All his money — and a great deal of Torchwood’s too, behind everyone’s back — had gone to supporting Lisa. He’d just gotten his first paycheck since... since Lisa.... Staring at the number in his account, he’d only blinked at it in silence. He had no idea what to do with the money.   
  
There would be no more sleeping for him tonight. He forced himself to his feet, battling his own body, which was crying out for more than sleep. As always, there was only one thing for it. Work. Back to work. Clean the floors and pick up the trash, maintain the computers and update the software, fix the plumbing, organize the archives, scan for anomalies and take up the dry cleaning. Anything and everything that could occupy his hands and occupy his mind. Otherwise Lisa’s bloody body kept leaping before his mind’s eye, or Gwen’s terrified horror on the cyberunit, or the death grimace on Lilly the pizza girl’s face, or Dr....   
  
Stop it.   
  
Ianto put on a fresh suit and headed out into the night to the hub.  
  
The hub was dark. Everyone had gone home. It was three in the morning. Usually Ianto just moved through in silence, picking up and scrubbing down. He didn’t want to be caught by Jack, who was often (always, hissed a part of Ianto’s mind) awake. He suspected Jack always knew he was there, but he ignored him. He’d been mostly ignoring him since Lisa...   
  
Ianto shook his head and headed to his broom closet. Time to sweep room 10A of the archives. Again. He had no idea where the dust kept coming from.   
  
In truth, the dust was getting hard to find. The hub was spotless. But Ianto needed something to do.   
  
His plans were interrupted as the sound of breaking crashed through the center of the hub. Jack’s slurred voice started to curse. More breaking, and then a splash as Jack fell into the water. Ianto abandoned his broom and turned on the lights.   
  
“God damn it!” shouted Jack, down on his knees in the water by the elevator. “Turn off the damn lights!”   
  
Ianto ignored this and ran down to help Jack up. He surveyed the breakage — Jack had run into one of the coffee tables, and there were broken mugs lying amidst the rubble of the wood.   
  
Jack swayed as Ianto pulled him into a standing position, and then nearly pulled Ianto down with him as he splashed in the water looking for something. “Wait, wait,” he said. His hands closed on the object of his desire and raised it to his face. It was a fifth of Irish whiskey, now mostly filled with water. “God DAMN it!” Jack yelled, and threw the bottle at the wall. It broke, and glass splintered.   
  
Ianto rolled his eyes, already knowing who was supposed to clean that up. “Come on, sir,” he said. “You have to get out of the water.”   
  
“Who are you to tell me what to do?” Jack said, swaying. “You’re not even supposed to BE here.”   
  
“Just cleaning up, sir,” Ianto said. He led Jack up the ramp and back onto dry ground. It was obvious that Jack was sodden in more ways than one.   
  
“Cleaning up,” Jack muttered. “Cleaning up. There’s never anything TO clean up. You can get me another bottle, that’s what you can do, coffee boy.”   
  
“Yes, sir.”   
  
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. That’s all you ever say to me any more.”   
  
“Yes, sir.”   
  
“Shut up,” Jack muttered. He swayed, and Ianto lost his grip on him. He’d been trying to get him to the couch, but Jack staggered and hit the wall. Having found this, he slid gracelessly down onto his arse, leaning up against the bricks like they were the softest cushions.   
  
Ianto was left staring down at him.  
  
“Well, go on,” Jack said. “Leave me here. I know you can’t stand to look at me, either.”   
  
“Pardon, sir?”  
  
Jack shook his head, a pained look across his face. “What was I supposed to do?” he asked loudly. “What?! You see the way they all looked at me? They couldn’t look at me. I didn’t do it. I didn’t DO this!” He gasped. If Ianto hadn’t known better, he would have thought Jack was holding back tears. But he DID know better. “But I couldn’t stop it,” he muttered. “This once I couldn’t stop it. Some days, everybody lives. Not this time.”   
  
Ianto squatted down on his toes, intending to drag Jack back to his feet. Instead, Jack grabbed his tie and pulled him closer. Ianto’s heart surged, and he braced himself to fight away — or something — as the scent of Jack’s alcohol breath blasted into his face. “Do you think I wanted them to win?” he asked Ianto. “Do you think I wouldn’t have died to save that girl?”  
  
Ianto knew, roughly, what he had to be talking about. Everyone wrote down their paperwork and filed their reports and he glanced over them for errors and filed them away in the computer archives. He knew Jack had to be referring to the child who had been taken earlier that day by the “faeries.” But the first girl that always popped into Ianto’s head was Lisa. “No,” he said. “I don’t think you would have.”   
  
Jack let him go and sagged lower against the wall. “Of course not,” he said. “It’s never that easy. What am I supposed to do for her mother?” he asked suddenly. “And why’d she have to get involved? I told her, I told her again and again, they are NOT NICE!”   
  
“Her mother’s going to grieve,” Ianto said. “You know that.”   
  
“Not HER,” Jack said, his voice cracking. “Estelle...” He closed his eyes, grimacing for a few painful seconds. Then, with a sudden gasp, he threw all the pain from his face and squared his shoulders. “I need another drink,” he said firmly, and hoisted himself up on the wall.   
  
Ianto had only glanced at the files that evening, but he thought Estelle was the name of the old woman Gwen had referenced obliquely in her report. The one who had directed them to the faeries, and who had died in one of the freak storms.   
  
Jack could barely stand as it was. He staggered too far and hit the wall again before Ianto caught him. “Don’t touch me,” Jack said as Ianto held him in his arms. His eyes were hungry. “That is so not fair.”   
  
Ianto blinked. “Sorry, sir,” he said. He backed off... and then jumped right back again as Jack nearly fell.   
  
“Oh, god damn you,” Jack muttered as Ianto headed him off toward the couch again. “Why’d you have to be so fucking gorgeous?”   
  
“Just unlucky, I guess,” Ianto said dully, and Jack laughed.  
  
“Never again, I said, never again,”Jack said as his laughter faded. “Not with a co-worker, it’s damned stupid. And then you had to be so fucking adorable, and I said, ‘what the hell!’ I didn’t want to either, you know,” he said, staring at Ianto. He shook his head. “That’s not true. I did want to. But I didn’t WANT to want to.”   
  
Ianto glanced at him. That sentiment was suspiciously like... No.   
  
“Oh, god, I wanted to,” Jack muttered. “Damn you bastard, come in and make my life complicated.” Then he sighed. “It’s okay, you know. It never lasts. I never expected it to last. I just didn’t expect it to be a lie.”   
  
Ianto didn’t want to talk about this, particularly not while Jack was drunk. Jack might say something he’d regret later... or he might say something Ianto would regret later.   
  
“It always ends,” Jack continued as Ianto finally got him lying on the couch. “They all die, or they all grow up and leave me behind. I feel like Peter Pan. Come away with me. Off to Never, Never Land! And in the end they leave, when they realize I’ll never grow up. Never, never... Why can’t they understand? I don’t expect you to stay young forever. Estelle was still so... beautiful....” Then his face crumpled again, and he turned against the couch cushions and sobbed.  
  
And then Ianto got it. He didn’t even need to be told. Because he knew that look. He’d made it a hundred times since Lisa... Late at night, when the pain broke over him like a wave, and the sob came up from out of nowhere, and all you could do was curl up and let it pour out of you.   
  
“She was the one, wasn’t she,” he said. “The one you loved.”   
  
Jack sniffed and pulled his face out of the cushions. “Oh, Ianto,” Jack whispered. “I’m so old, now. Do you really think there could have been only one?” He chuckled, and Ianto couldn’t be sure it was a laugh or a sob. “What a hard, barren heart I’d have if that were true. Oh, God, I wish that were true.”   
  
Ianto stared at him. Ianto realized, the thought creeping slowly over him like a rising dawn, that Jack knew EXACTLY what Ianto was going through. He had lost people he loved. Lost them again and again and again, over and over, some of them violently, some of them tragically, always, inevitably, setting himself up to hurt again and again. No wonder he seemed so harsh and distant. No wonder it was hard for him to open up.   
  
No wonder he hadn’t tried to reach out to Ianto, show his weakness. No wonder sex with him had always seemed so... heartless.   
  
Jack wasn’t heartless, Ianto realized. Jack was hurting. Always hurting.  
  
He didn’t want to feel sympathy for Jack. He wanted to hate him. Hating him was easier.   
  
But he looked so... alone....  
  
Ianto stood up and left Jack there, turning once more into the cushions, his shoulders occasionally tensing as the deadening affect of the alcohol failed to do its job. Five minutes later, Ianto returned. A fresh set of clothes in his hand, a towel and a garbage bag.   
  
“Come on, sir,” he said gently. “We need to get these off you.”   
  
Jack regarded him, his face damp. Whether it was with sweat or with tears, Ianto wasn’t going to try and judge. “Now you ARE trying to torture me,” he said.   
  
Ianto smiled. “You’ll get cold,” he said. “These clothes are wet.” He paused. “I will help you.”   
  
Jack sat up and let Ianto unbutton his shirt and pull down his braces. Ianto had thought he’d never do this again. He tried not to remember all the times he had done this under other circumstances, and how much he had hated it... or told himself he hated it. Yet he’d never tried to avoid it, either. Had even gone out of his way to...  
  
No. He was just keeping Jack distracted, keeping him from guessing about Lisa. That was the only reason he had ever done anything with Jack. Never mind that he smelled like sex itself and his skin was smooth and his muscles so hard in his shoulders and...  
  
Ianto quickly unfolded the fresh shirt and wrapped it around Jack’s shoulders. Jack let him, regarding him through half closed eyes. One hand reached up as Ianto was buttoning him and he caressed Ianto’s hair. Ianto pulled away, but Jack’s hand stayed, tracing down his jaw until he was holding Ianto’s head by the neck. He often did that before he kissed him. Ianto’s cock twitched involuntarily, and his heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t breathe. No. No, he didn’t want this, he didn’t want Jack, he didn’t want... Why wasn’t he pulling away?   
  
But Jack let him go, without trying anything. Ianto told himself he was relieved. His shoulders sagged and he took in a breath. Never again. He regarded Jack’s trousers. No. Enough was enough. He couldn’t go there. Not tonight, with the memory of his dreams tickling the back of his mind, and Jack’s drunken vulnerability. Jack would just have to survive with wet legs. He lay the fresh trousers on the arm of the couch, and took off Jack’s shoes and socks. It would have to do. Then he lay the garbage bag down with the towel over it. Gently, he lay Jack back down.  
  
“What’s this?” Jack said, his head lolling drunkenly on the towel.   
  
“If you’re going to throw up,” Ianto said, “it would be easier to clean up if it wasn’t on the couch.”   
  
Jack laughed bleakly. “Right.”   
  
“You should get some sleep.”   
  
“Ha!” Jack said. “I’d need a lot more alcohol to even begin to try THAT.”   
  
Ianto regarded him evenly. He hadn’t really wanted to do this... but he knew was Jack was going through. He pulled the bottle of vodka from his suit and set it on the floor within reach of Jack’s hand. “There you are, sir.”   
  
Jack stared at it for a long moment and then looked back up at Ianto. “What are you doing that for?”  
  
“Just hoping you’ll give yourself alcohol poisoning, sir,” he said with a smirk.   
  
“Hm,” Jack snorted. He stared up at him. “Why are you being so nice to me?”   
  
Ianto blinked at him. “Just doing my job, sir.”   
  
Jack closed his eyes and Ianto turned to get back to work.   
  
“Ianto!” Jack called from behind him. “Don’t go.”  
  
Ianto turned, unsure what Jack meant. There was no clue in his slack, drunken face. After a momentary hesitation, he said, “Don’t worry, sir. I’m not going anywhere.”   
  
“I’m sorry,” Jack muttered, his hand clenched round the bottle and his eyes unfocused. Ianto thought he was talking to him, until Jack muttered, “I’m sorry, Estelle.”   
  
Ice formed slowly around Ianto’s heart. He wasn’t sure why, at first. Then Jack took one more swig from his bottle. This proved to be the final one, because he lost his grip and it fell, spilling vodka on the ground. Ianto patiently set it upright and put it just out of Jack’s reach.   
  
“Ianto,” Jack whispered, and Ianto found the frost melting.   
  
Oh, shit, Ianto realized. I’m jealous. Of a dead old woman! Over a man I hate! Ianto shook his head and turned away from Jack, hating him even more for confusing him.  
  
“How stupid is this, Lisa?” he muttered as he brewed the coffee Jack was definitely going to need when he came to. “Wish you were still here to tell me what to do.” But he knew he couldn’t have anyway, because he’d never told Lisa what he was doing for her. She’d never known he let Jack take him to his bed. Bend him over the table. Tie him to the bedstead. Make him cry out so hard he thought his head would burst....  
  
Stop it.  
  
He turned back to find Jack well and truly passed out. His mouth was slightly open and his face was slack. He looked cold. Ianto wished he’d had to courage to help him change his trousers.   
  
But he hadn’t. Instead he went back up to the office and fetched Jack’s coat. Gently, he tucked it over Jack’s still form.   
  
He had the absurd desire to kiss him goodnight.  
  
Instead, he cleaned up the breakages. Then he took up his broom and went to sweep archive room 10A.  
  
Never again, he told himself. Never, never....  



End file.
